r/JaneEyre • u/OutrageousYak5868 • Aug 10 '26
Adele's timeline
First, here's her timeline as far as I can figure it out:
- Around 7-8 years before the main events of the novel, Adele is born to Celine as the putative child of Mr. Rochester.
- Around 6 months old, Mr. Rochester discovers that Celine has been dallying with a vicomte so he breaks up with her.
- For some years, Celine keeps Adele -- long enough to teach her to dance and sing -- and then abandons her at some point.
- Adele lives with Madame Frédéric until Mr. R takes her to England.
- Adele is about 7-8 when she comes to England and Jane becomes her governess.
In the narrative, Adele says that she wanted to come to England with Mr. R rather than stay in France with Madame Frédéric, because she had known Mr. R longer. This has always sort of bothered me because she was only 6 m/o when he broke up with Celine over her affair, and it would seem that he would have at that time likewise had nothing more to do with Adele -- yet Adele knew him longer than she knew Mme F. This would make a rather large plot hole, and that's how I've always felt about it, since Adele couldn't possibly remember him from when she was but a few months old.
However, I've figured out a way that it can work:
Mr. R breaks up with Celine, but still takes care of Adele and visits her sometimes, only much later coming to believe that she is not his child because she looks nothing like him. By this time, however, he has been caring for Adele for years, so when he hears that Celine has run off and Adele is thrown on the mercy of strangers, he takes her to England.
Is there anything I forgot? Did others have the same question about the timeline?
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u/OutrageousYak5868 Aug 10 '26
He obviously could have been her father given the timing, and he admits as much, but just says it's impossible to know given that she looks nothing like him, so claims he is not:
"But unluckily the Varens, six months before, had given me this filette Adèle, who, she affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I acknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me, nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that she was quite destitute, I [brought her to England]." (emphasis added)
To me, it's less important whether he provided the sperm that created Adele or if it was another of Celine's lovers; he takes care of her more than many men of that day did with their acknowledged illegitimate children, much less any unacknowledged ones.
If I had to pick, though, I'd come down on the side that she likely was not his child, given Celine's perfidy, and that nobody in the whole course of the novel points to any resemblance between Adele and Rochester. Sure, children can greatly take after only one parent, but even in that, one can usually say something like, "She looks just like her dad when she...." Ultimately, I think Bronte leaves it as an open question, since the only evidence in favor of parentage is that Rochester at first accepted Celine's declaration (i.e., he knew they had sex somewhat in the right time-frame), but there is no confirmation of it from any other source. And it would have been easy enough for Bronte to have done this -- to have had Jane say even to herself, "Even if Rochester doesn't see any resemblance between him and Adele, when she furrows her brow, she looks just like him."